


Poor Architects of Fortune

by Colourofsaying



Category: Drowned Lovers
Genre: F/M, Gen, Murder, Not A Happy Ending, Suicide, Tragedy, every character dies, mentions of past rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourofsaying/pseuds/Colourofsaying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The music and noise of the town met them at the gate, and they swept up the main street towards the square. There were jugglers on corners, musicians playing for pennies with wide wooden bowls at their feet, bright streamers strung across the width of the road. They reached the square, and across it, Elinor saw sweet, sad Mistress Alys, her arm tight and possessive in her son’s while Margaret stiffened to alertness beside her, and all the long years of anxious secrecy were nothing, because of course he’d grown up handsome, just as Margaret had grown up fine.</p><p>See end for additional spoiler-y warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poor Architects of Fortune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Island_of_Reil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/gifts).



It was a harvest fair, where they’d finally met, under a cold gray November sky.

For the first time that week, there was no rain, and so they’d walked to town along the road, the wind teasing the artful coiffure of her daughter’s hair to seaweed as they went before it dashed off to rattle through the wheat stalks in the sheafed fields. Looking at her, it seemed to Elinor that she’d caught the last of the year’s sun in her face, as excited as she was for the fair. If anything, the chill had only served to sharpen her enthusiasm.

She’d met her own husband at a fair like this, and seventeen years was not too long to have forgotten her own excitement as she hurried to towards the square beside her parents. Margaret knew as well as she that half the town found their matches there, one of the few times each year that the youth from the outlying farms and hamlets came in with their year’s surplus to sell at the markets, and the anticipation in each aborted skip of her step reminded Elinor of her own, all those years ago. Her throat tightened, and she rolled her shoulders back, shaking the tension from them. Margaret would be happy, she reminded herself. After all, most women were. She would meet someone kind and well-favored, go off with him to far away if there was any luck in the world, and there would the end of it for all Elinor’s own heart would break to lose her.

The music and noise of the town met them at the gate, and they swept up the main street towards the square. There were jugglers on corners, musicians playing for pennies with wide wooden bowls at their feet, bright streamers strung across the width of the road. They reached the square, and across it, Elinor saw sweet, sad Mistress Alys, her arm tight and possessive in her son’s. Margaret stiffened to alertness beside her, and all the long years of anxious secrecy were nothing, because of course he’d grown up handsome, just as Margaret had grown up fine.

Later, Elinor knew that Margaret would try to tell her that there had been sunlight, that their eyes had met and held, and the drag of their combined gaze had pulled them together, like fate, destiny in a glance. She’d  felt as if she’d always known him, she’d say, as if he was made for her, and every other lovestruck nonsense a girl could say when she stumbled across a handsome boy who liked her looks just as well.

It had been a long time since Elinor herself had taken any pleasure in the bold pass of a man’s eye, though to be sure there was a certain fascination in it. A week married, and she’d grown to detest her so-handsome husband’s claiming hands, the brusque pass of them over her skin as he pursued his own pleasure in her body. It had taken her little longer to begin to detest the man himself, and not long at all to loathe him with all she was.

But children were not their parents, and Margaret, so generous of spirit, had so little of either in her. It was as likely William was nothing like his own father; he’d never known the man, after all, he’d been dead long before the boy was born. Elinor’s mouth twisted wryly; neither she nor Alys had had much luck with husbands, though it had done little enough to endear them to each other.

“Mama,” Margaret murmured in her ear. Elinor turned towards her, grasped her elbow in her hand, tried to draw her off the main square to the side streets with the shining ribbons for her hair, to the food stalls with the roasted nuts Margaret loved, to the wealthy merchants’ stalls with the rich bolts of fabrics from far away lands - she’d pay anything, any price, if Margaret would only come away. “Who is that, with Mistress Alys? How have I never seen him before?”

With great care, Elinor could answer, and didn’t. Care, and concern, and meetings about the rent roll that had little to do with money, especially as the two of them grew older. They should not meet, it had been decided, though they had never mentioned the decision. Only how to effect it. It was better, that way. Safer for everyone.

And of course it was today that their caution failed - they had forgotten, perhaps, or a message had been lost, or some simple coincidence had led to this shattering of all their secrets and cooperation - today, when the cold wind lent them vibrancy and the promise of romance lay in their minds - but there was no helping it. She drew a deep breath.

“It is her son, William,” Elinor said. “And not so strange, that you have not met; they live the town over, and Mistress Alys has long depended on his aid. Come away, Margaret - there’s the silk vendor down the street there, and I have in mind a new gown for you.”  
“Shall we not greet them first?” Margaret asked, all innocence and nothing of the sort. “She is your tenant, after all. It would be rude to pass without a greeting.”

So she was, and so it would be, though Alys would not mind the slight. They should have cut the last tie years ago, when Margaret’s skirts were still short and William had been nothing but a weedy and unprepossessing child. She’d not have paid him a moment’s notice then, the year’s difference between them an unbridgeable gap.

Now, though she was still a year older, the difference was little enough to notice, something they might tease each other over in years to come. If they married. Bile rose in her throat. She nodded politely at Alys, who nodded back, her own grip tightening on William’s arm.

“And now we have greeted them, and all is well,” Elinor said, her voice calm. “Do come along, child, or we’ll miss the best of the silks.”

They walked off together, but she did not miss her daughter’s glances over her shoulder, and when she held up a bolt of amber silk for Margaret’s opinion, it was with a sort of deadened inevitability that she saw the girl had vanished. She set the cloth down and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.

“Mistress Elinor,” the stallkeeper said from beside her, his voice concerned. He was another of her tenants, when he was not trading; a good, solid, respectable man, though prone to fussiness. She opened her eyes and looked at him coolly. “Are you unwell? Would you care for some mulled wine, or there’s a stool out of the wind if you wish to sit.”

“No, no,” she said, and tried to smile. The expression sat ill on her face. “I am well - did you see in which direction my daughter went?”

“Towards the square,” the merchant said, gesturing in that direction. “Are you sure you will not take some wine?”

“I’m well, really,” Elinor said, and, seeing his doubting face, gestured to the silk. “Would you be so kind as to hold this for me, till I have collected my errant child? I think it would suit her well.”

The concern smoothed from his face, leaving the smug anticipation of a large sale, and Elinor, released, flew after her daughter, walking as quickly as she could through the crowd. The crowds were thick, and the fair large; one could wander for hours without encountering who one sought. It was possible they had not met; even in the square, it would be difficult to find someone, if you were not so well acquainted with their height, the color of their hair, their way of moving.

She stumbled into the square, skimming over the bodies and faces for her daughter. Her vision swam, and the crowd rippled liquid. Margaret was not - there she was, tucked away in the corner of the church, her head tilted up to smile at someone. A gust of windy rain spattered through the square, cold on the back of Elinor’s neck. She hurried towards the corner of the church, and when she reached it, Margaret was alone, winding a blue-gray ribbon around her hand.

 

The formal request for a courtship came a few days later.

“No,” Elinor said as he finished, face pale and hopeful. In the bridge of his nose and the angle of his jaw lay ghosts. “No, and no again.”

“I love her,” he told her seriously. “And she loves me.”

Elinor laughed at him, as cold and cruel as she could make it.

“A lingering glance, a few minutes’ talk, and you’re in love,” she said. “As if love were no more difficult to acquire than a cake. You’re not in love, boy. Desire, I’ll grant you.”

“It’s more than that!” the child protested, serious as a judge for all his gawky young bones and half-formed face. Fifteen, and in love. She shook her head. They were probably sighing at each other over every fence between here and the river, if youth was anything like it used to be. She couldn’t watch the girl every hour of the day, and little good would it do her to try. It’d like as not turn them both contrary.

“Of course it is,” she said. “Of course. Infant prattle and handholding. Have you thought how you’ll provide for the pair of you, in all your planning, or do you intend to live off your wife’s money like a powdered French courtier?”

He flushed, blotched and red, and the unfairness of it was that even then he looked no less appealing.

She couldn’t remember her own husband blushing; even as he’d stared back at her bare-assed on top of another woman, a hand on her throat as he casually continued fucking into her, he’d never changed complexion. He’d probably forgotten how long before they’d married, if he’d ever known enough shame in the first place.

“I’d never touch her money,” he said, vicious. “We’re well enough without it, for all your scoffing. She can do as she pleases.”

“With plenty left for the children, no doubt,” Elinor added, and pursed her lips a moment before softening her expression. “You’re but fifteen, child. Grow a beard and a spine and ask again, in a few years.”

And by then she’d have her daughter far away, wed to another, or at the least out of reach. Out of sight, out of mind; she prayed, as she had rarely prayed before, that he would accept the answer as a true choice, concede to her will.

He shook his head, and she closed her eyes briefly. Her husband had never liked the word ‘no’, either. Had he liked it better - but he was long dead, and this was a matter for the living, now, though she’d heaped curses on his head before and had no intention of stopping.

When she opened her eyes, she was cold again.

“Out,” she said, firm and flat. “I’ve told you no, and you’ll both be satisfied with that, or I’ll have the pair of you so far apart you’ll never hope to find each other in five years of searching. Back to your own land, boy, and never let me see you near my daughter or my doors.”

He opened his mouth to protest, and she fixed him with a stare till he bowed his head and left, heels angry on her floors. She slumped into a chair at the sound of the closing door, and tilted her head till it rested against the back. There was, after all, no one to see her weakness.

 

When Margaret came in, hopeful as early spring and serene as a poxy millpond, she took a certain amount of pleasure in forbidding her daughter to see the boy again. It’d been an unpleasant interview, and watching the source of it grow tense and hard had a certain vindictive satisfaction in it. It only took a few words; Elinor dismissed the girl, pretended to miss the stone in her daughter’s eyes and the quiet certitude of her voice, and when the girl left the solar, she set a man to guard her daughter’s door.

A wiser woman might have kept the girl even closer, for all the screaming and shattered glass that might result; the man she set to watch her daughter failed in his task, and his successor too. Perhaps Alys thought her boy too good to disobey her, even for love, or perhaps he’d never told her he was going to ask, braving her displeasure by presenting it as a done thing. Perhaps, Elinor thought, Alys no longer cared. She’d always been softer, when they were children, and - after. Perhaps that was why, or perhaps she’d just been convenient.

It had only been chance that she found them at all. Waking in the night, she’d thought to check on Margaret, just a few months old. She’d been sleeping quietly enough, and Elinor had stood by her cradle for a while, watching her child in the half-light of the candle. The floor had been cold, but she’d been reluctant to return to her bed.

She hadn’t caught the muffled cries from outside for a while.

There had been a light in the courtyard, where light had no business being, when she went to the window. She had wondered what she should do, for there was no one to rouse; they’d not been well off enough yet to have live-in servants, and she’d been unsurprised to find her husband’s place cold and empty when she woke, though the missing heat of him had been unwelcome. He’d barely touched her since she’d quickened, and she’d been glad enough of the reprieve. Whoever his mistress, she was more than welcome to him. She’d have paid the woman herself, and gladly parted with every penny, if it meant he never came to her again.

Elinor caught herself rubbing at her wrists, where the marks had faded sixteen years ago, and stilled her hands, folding them neatly in her lap. The candle burned low, and the accounts were yet undone, but her hands would not move to the pen.

The yard had been bitingly cold, snow flurrying around her feet as she scuffed across to the half-open door of the stables. The cries had been louder then, and she’d gripped the handle of the shovel tighter in her numb hands, readying it for whatever lay within. It was her house and her stables, and she’d have no scofflaws of any sort dirtying her property. Besides, there was the horse to think of. If the trading went well, they could afford another by the spring fair, but if they lost the one they had, it’d set them back years.

She’d edged in the door and froze, a gust of wind rushing the snow in around her. Perhaps she’d made a sound. He’d turned to look at her over his shoulder, and raised an eyebrow when he saw her.

His hips had never ceased their work. She still remembered the taste in her mouth, sharp and acid and sickly.

If he hadn’t turned from her, never pausing, she might not have done it. But turn from her he had done, hand clasped around the woman’s throat, and her nails scrabbling bloody on his wrist. He turned from her, and the woman in the straw, she was no lover, no mistress, and if he’d paid her for her time, she’d clearly thought the better of it. Elinor had taken three steps forward and brought the shovel down upon his skull, as hard as she was able.

He’d fallen forward and the woman, at the loosening of his grasp, choked, scrabbled back and away from him till her shoulders hit the wall of the stall. Her gown was still rucked up around her knees, smeared with blood and dung. Elinor had ignored her for the moment - she’d keep - and gone to her husband’s side, rolling him over. She’d thought him stunned at first, for all his staring eyes, but there was no breath from his mouth on her hand nor beat of his heart under her ear, so she stood, brushed off her knees, and went over to the woman.

“He’s dead,” she’d said shortly, shaking her shoulder. “Stop your sniveling and help me get him out of here. I’ve a daughter, I can’t be thought to have a hand in this.”

The woman hadn’t protested; she’d been too shocked to realize that she’d had no part in his death. And her own good name rested in Elinor’s silence, as much as Elinor’s freedom rested in hers.

Well, she’d had her freedom, and Alys her name, and much good coin it had cost to keep them. And all due to a goatish midden-born whoreson, who hadn’t even the grace to die on his own. They’d loaded the corpse onto the horse and lugged the lot down to the shore path. It had been dark enough and slippery with the snow that a horse might shy and slip, losing its rider, and both women had known the way of a fatal fall. It was easy enough to arrange, and as much as it had worried her to leave it, the horse had found its way back quick as expected.

No one wept at the funeral, nor blinked when Alys found her way upriver for a year and a day. A traveling merchant who took a fancy to her was as good a reason as any, and when she came back in a year with a child and a ring on her finger, there was no one to contradict her.

 

But now there were whispers, murmurs, because the match was a good one. She was lovely, he was handsome, and if his birth was a little lower, well, he was a good boy, a hard worker, and Margaret would have more than enough for a family. So why should they oppose it so? 

Elinor lifted her head and ignored them, fanned the rumors with every gleaming ribbon purchased for Margaret’s new amber gown. Better they should think her greedy, with ideas above her station. Better that even her daughter thought so, rather than to find her lover was - it was better. They had time, yet; the children were so young, and if her daughter was willful, at least it seemed that the boy had learned something of respect from his mother. When the winter was over, she would go, and take Margaret with her, and she’d forget, and there’d be no harm done, however often she escaped her watchers now.

The days shortened and grew colder, and every week there were days when the harsh silence of their dining hall was lighter, and for moments Margaret even seemed conciliatory, as if she were ashamed of her deception.

How like her father she was, in those moments, save that she came home with sweet smiles and fond endearments on her tongue, and he had come bearing bolts of silk and pretty baubles to distract her from her knowledge. It had not worked then, and it did not work now, and if she spoke to wound the girl, she cut herself twice as deep.

And all for nothing. Whatever she said made little difference; every day there were absences, half an hour here, an hour there, and it was little enough time but time enough. Elinor began to wonder if they would make it till spring, if Margaret would even be willing to leave with her when the roads cleared.

 

In January, there was a week of rain, warm for the month and heavy. No one stirred out of doors, beyond what was necessary to keep themselves and their animals fed. It was a dangerous rain; children grew ill, and animals sickened from being in the wet. No one was crossing the river. Even Margaret did not try to leave, though as she sat in her bower and sewed, her eyes rarely left the western wall. Elinor sat with her, most days, working on the papers for their business till they ran out, then picking up her own sewing. It seemed like years since she’d last had the time to sit and sew, to chat with her daughter.

Not that her daughter was speaking, much. The girl was sullen as a petted princess deprived of her favorite baubles, and silent with it. At least she was getting some good work done; the mending was finished, and half the work for the new gown. If the rain didn’t let up, she’d set the child to embroidery, and see if they couldn’t get some fine work to sell come spring out of this uncommon productivity.

So they sat in silence, listening to the endless rain, and Elinor wondered - if ever there was a time to tell her daughter why she opposed her wishes so, then this, with the quiet endless rushing of the water surrounding them, would be a good time. The trickle and beat of it lulled her breaths to quietness, stilled the sounds around them till there was nothing but the rain and the steady drips into the overflowing tubs in the courtyard. She looked at Margaret, her face pale and remote even now, mouth stubbornly closed, and looked away. No.

They stitched quietly until the watery gray light faded away entirely.

That evening, traders came, and stopped at Elinor’s door. There was room enough for their bedraggled party, and room enough for their horses and baggage as well. They’d pay good coin for the night’s lodging, and remember her come spring. With luck, she’d get first pickings at their goods when they came back through from the north come the spring fair. She welcomed them in, gave them supper, and Margaret played a merry hostess, singing with their carefully-censored songs and pouring the wine with a liberal hand. Perhaps that was all that was needed - new faces, new music, a breath of the greater world for a restless maid in a long winter. Elinor listened to the traders’ tales of the great cities to the south, and smiled. She had no great taste for them, herself, but their fine tales and bragging were a different matter for a younger woman. She’d get the girl out of here yet, and no harm done.

Everyone had been settled in for the night, Margaret safely tucked away in her bower, traders securely lodged in stable and hall, when she heard a stamping at the gate. She took a lantern and went to see who this newest visitor was, come so late, and closed her eyes. Of course. And him such a fool that he tied the damn thing at the gate. Even if he hadn’t been - what he’d been - she’d wish her daughter had picked a cleverer suitor.

It was an ostentatious creature, that horse, black as the devil and shining with the overzealous care of idle hands. The boy’s savings, every penny of them, had gone into the thing, or she was no judge of horseflesh; there were few of its quality along the River Clyde, and none that matched it for color and fineness. Useless for a lad of his station, nothing but bait for horse thieves, and he’d tied it at the gate as if she were blind and stupid with it. Elinor pursed her lips and thought a moment. Well. 

Going back inside the house, she slipped in the inside door to Margaret’s room, casting a glance over her sleeping daughter. Her hair was tumbled half across the pillow, half across her face, free of proper nightcap, a hand curled by her cheek, and she looked so young with the candlelight on her. She ached to smooth the hair from her daughter’s brow - but the young fool was shaking at the latch, and he’d wake her if she did not take care.

“Margaret,” he hissed, voice low and secret. “Margaret, will you not rise up and let me in?”

“Who’s there?” she whispered, as if she did not know.

“Only your William,” he murmured, trying to lower his voice to something deep and caressing. She had to hold back a snort; he’d do better to wait a few years and give it another go. “It’s long since I’ve seen you, love, will you not let me in? My boots are full of the river, and I’m frozen to the skin.”

“Did you not see the traders’ cart?” she murmured back, keeping her voice as light and like her daughter’s as she could. “Our barns are full of traders, and - well, did you not wonder why you’d heard nothing from me? The barn’s not the only building with a fine man in it, Willie, and he won’t be gone till day.”

“Well, then fare you well, Margaret,” he said; even in the pain of his childish heartbreak, he kept his voice low; Elinor was glad to see she’d frightened him that much, if not enough to keep him from her daughter proper. “Fare you well, and adieu; it’s my mother’s own curse I’ve won, coming this night to you.”

Elinor was silent, and at last he went away, the sound of his boots squelching off through the mud of the yard. She sighed, and went to lie in her own bed, though she could not sleep. His mother’s own curse, he’d said. Sweet Alys, too, had grown tired. It was nothing; a curse was nothing, and like as not he’d be home before long, wet and cold and sore of heart and nothing at all amiss with him. 

The rain began again, and the sound did not soothe her. Even from here, it seemed she could hear the rushing of the Clyde water.

It seemed as if her blankets would never warm. She waited, in the dark, for - sleep, perhaps. And then she heard Margaret’s soft steps at her door, and the chill in her bed crept into her bones.

“Mother?” Margaret asked. Her voice was thick with sleep, uncertain. It had been years since she’d come to Elinor’s room, wracked with nightmares, and crawled in with her till Elinor’s breath lulled her to sleep. She’d been so tender, then. “Mother, I had the strangest dream.”

“Yes, child?” Elinor said. She didn’t move. Margaret opened the door, slipped into the room, and sat at the foot of the bed, her hands clutching at the spread. The pull of the fabric sent shivers through Elinor, and she was so very tired. “What did you dream?”

“I dreamed that my love was at our door,” she said. “And no one let him in.”

“Oh, then,” Elinor said, and speaking, knew she spoke amiss. “He knew well enough he was not welcome here. I sent him about his business quick enough.”

“At this time of night,” Margaret said flatly. “In this rain. With the roads and the river how they are.”

“Shush you, child, and go back to sleep - it’s two quarters since he rode off, he’s doubtless home and safe again.” Her hands were clenched under the sheets, and she watched the unmoving stillness of her daughter’s body tensely. “Lie down and sleep; he’ll be back to plague us, I am sure, and no harm done.”

“Sure, and no harm done,” Margaret echoed. “Sleep well, mother, if you can.”

She slipped from the room, and Elinor, listening with every bone in her body, heard the door of her room close softly, softly. She tried to relax. The minutes slipped by, and then, as sleep beckoned, she heard the thud of the outer door and knew her daughter was gone.

 

They buried them in the potter’s field. Suicide or no, they’d had no one to read them their last rites, and no manner of bribes would see the priests lay them to rest decently. From across the field, Elinor watched Alys as her boy’s coffin was lowered into the ground. Her shoulders were bowed, but still; Alys had done her crying, and Elinor had no tears in her. Her girl lay in that wooden box at her feet, and as fine as it was it was no fit house for her Margaret. She wished, fiercely, for a last glance at her, but she’d had that. Had held her dead daughter, washed her cold body. Laid it out in the amber gown, and curled her hair neatly around her face. Another look would not change it; if she lifted the coffin’s lid, her daughter would still be still and pale. 

The men lowered the coffin into the ground, and she flinched at the thud of the heavy earth. Again and again, till the sound softened and lightened, the pit filled, her daughter consigned to clay. There was nothing left for her, not here.

She looked across the field and met Alys’ eyes. There was no hate in them; they’d made their choice, the pair of them, and this was how it ended. Two lone women in a potter’s field, their children cold beneath the sodden earth. Alys, Elinor thought, would use poison. She had always had a housekeeper’s spirit, pinchpenny neatness and propriety. She imagined it; the woman slumped over her son’s empty bed, the sentimentality of the scene. People would say she was a good mother, that she couldn’t live when her son was gone, taken from her so cruelly. She’d be pretty in death, probably. Poppies and a lacy gown.

Well, at least she wouldn’t be there to see it. Elinor went home, and took her wedding gown from the chest at the foot of her bed. The sleeve was still ripped, where he’d torn it, and the skirt stained; she’d never cleaned or mended it, never worn it again after that night. A waste of a fine gown, really. She put it on, smoothing the green fabric down over her hips, pleased at the fit of it even after all these years.

Her knife, she tossed on the bed. She’d had the thing made when Margaret was a toddler, and kept it sharp, though over the years it had worn down till it was too thin for much but a letter opener. It’d serve well enough for the purpose, and it was hers, and hers alone, and damn them all but if she was going to die, she’d do it well, with none of this fairytale nonsense. Death was messy and painful and difficult, and hell if she’d make it easy for anyone. She sat down on the coverlet, pulled her hair over her right shoulder, and picked up the knife.

**Author's Note:**

> The additional warning is that the relationship between William and Margaret is incestuous, or would've been had they ever got around to doing anything about it other than sighing moonily, which they did not. Let that be a lesson to all: don't be rapist douches, because you will be murdered and your kids will drown after an incestuous romance and then your wife and victim will die horribly and everyone will haunt you and make your afterlife miserable.


End file.
